Student Talk Time and Collaborative Work

ELL students can often go the whole day, without being asked or required to speak. The following link is an excerpt from the book Content Area Conversations, by Fisher, Frey, and Rothenberg (2008). In the article, they discuss the effects of student to teacher talk time ratios on student achievement outcomes. It's powerful stuff, especially for those of us with reluctant speakers in class.

ASCD: Why Talk is Important in Classrooms, from Content Area Conversations

Collaborative work spaces give all students (both EL and EO) the opportunity to speak with their peers in a non-threatening environment. These spaces can increase valuable student speaking time, which is necessary in order to advance in language acquisition. Students can be given frames and word banks to help them practice applying academic language. This can also prepare students to speak and share as a whole group, for further discussion, or to prepare them to write about a topic. Read on to discover five features that help support these collaborative work spaces for all learners.

The following five features should be considered in any collaborative task. 
(Fisher & Frey, 2008; Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1991) 

1. Positive interdependence 

Members must see how their efforts contribute to the overall success of the group. The task cannot be one that individuals could have completed independently. Rather, the task has to have at least an aspect of interdependence such that students need each other to complete their work successfully.

2. Face-to-face interaction 

As part of the task, group members have to have time to interact live. Although they can also interact in virtual and electronic worlds, our experience suggests that the opportunity to interact on the physical level encourages accountability, feedback, and support.

3. Individual and group accountability 

As we have noted, productive group work is not simply having a group of students complete a task in parallel with peers that they could have done alone. Having said that, we also know that the risk of productive group work lies in participation. In nearly every group, there are likely members who would allow their peers to complete the required tasks. To address this, each member of the group must be accountable for some aspect of the task. Of course, this is a perfect opportunity to differentiate based on students’ needs and strengths. In addition to the individual accountability, the group must be accountable for the overall product. This also ensures that students who are overly involved from monopolizing the conversations during productive group work.

4. Interpersonal and small-group skills 

One of the opportunities presented during productive group work is social skill development. Wise teachers are clear about their expectations related to interpersonal skills and communicate these expectations to students. For example, during a group brainstorming session about ways to represent the concept of slope, Heather reminds her students that “put-downs for ideas are not allowed, especially during a brainstorming session.”

5. Group processing 

As part of the learning associated with productive group work, students need to learn how to think about, and discuss, their experiences. The goal of the discussion is for students to consider ways that they can improve their productivity and working relationships.

Source: Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Anderson, H. (2010). Thinking and comprehending in the mathematics classroom. In K. Ganske & D. Fisher (Eds.), Comprehension across the curriculum: Perspectives and practices K-12 (pp. 146-159). New York: Guilford.